No longer silent, more victims of sexual violence fight publication bans imposed in their names

Sifting through British Columbia’s online court registry for the name of the man who’d sexually assaulted her, Kelly Favro kept coming up empty.

“I had to get this stupid ban off my name to make his name public and to freely share what happened to me,” said Ms. Favro, a 39-year-old administrative co-ordinator in Victoria. Lifting the order became a labyrinthian process that ate up six months of her life. Most galling to her was that Mr. Erickson got a chance, in court, to ask that the order silencing her remain: He didn’t want the case to “attract any more attention,” the judge recalled in his ruling. Ultimately, the judge decided the harassment the offender “endured” since his sexual-assault conviction did not outweigh his victim’s right to tell her story publicly.

“For the first time, there’s a recognition for judges that the wishes of the victim matter,” said Morrell Andrews, a Vancouver federal civil servant who has led the charge to change the laws around publication bans in this country, following her own experience as a sexual-assault complainant. At their outset, publication bans were well-meaning, legal experts and advocates agree. The orders, introduced in the eighties and now mandated under Section 484.6 of the Criminal Code, were meant to encourage victims to come forward without fear their names would land on TV or in a newspaper.

“Like so many things, it starts out as a good idea or an idea that’s intended to address a legitimate problem,” said lawyer Pamela Cross, who, with Ms. Stephens, authored a guide on publication bans for the Consent Comes First campaign at Toronto Metropolitan University. “But … they got a little out of control, and I think they became so pro forma that victims weren’t even – in many cases, as we’re now finding out – aware of the fact that they existed.

In her victim impact statement, Ms. Andrews, now 28, criticized the court, saying it failed to provide meaningful remedy. She planned to share her words publicly, hoping to motivate survivors, but was warned she could not: Her name was under a publication ban. A publication ban kept Samantha Geiger silenced for more than two years after a man was charged with sexually assaulting her in the spring of 2020.

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